Page 19 - Jindezhen Porcelain Production of the 19th C. by Ellen Huang, Univ. San Diego 2008

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around the world. Since the Yuan dynasty, the kilns were for the most part run by

government officials who oversaw hundreds of craftsmen. Artisans and potters specialized

in throwing, mold production, underglaze design painting, overglaze enamelling and

calligraphy. These craftsmen were also helped by less skilled workers who prepared the

clay and transported the finished pots to the Cheng River for shipping. By the early

eighteenth century, porcelain produced in Jingdezhen had already attained such worldwide

prestige that it comprised an important part of China’s growing export economy. Between

1719 and 1833, foreign ships trading at Canton (Guangzhou), which was directly connected

to Jiujiang via the Gan River and the Qing dynasty’s primary trading port and only legally

endorsed entrepot after a Qing court imperial decree in 1759, increased thirteen-fold over a

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period of approximately a hundred years. The remains of a sunken Dutch East India

Company cargo ship en route from Canton to Batavia (present-day Jakarta) recovered in

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1984 contained at least 140,000 pieces of porcelain, the most of any type of good on board.

Jingdezhen exported several million pieces to European markets annually, a trade advantage

that compelled the domestic transit taxes at the port of Jiujiang to be the highest in the

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empire, benefiting the dynasty and the Jiangxi Yangtze region in general. Porcelain, along
with tea and silk, played a role in shaping a global trade system in which the net trade

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balance favored China. Beside economic aspects, Jingdezhen porcelain also carried
cultural weight. In light of the myriad pieces of porcelain in maritime Southeast Asia,

Europe, and coastal East Africa that feature combinations of patterns and ornamental

designs of multiple geographic origins, historian Robert Finlay has identified porcelain as a

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primary force in the creation of a global culture in the early modern era. Indeed, Chinese

porcelain had become such a desired material that it was an object of fixation for princes,